


more scar tissue than skin

by honey_wheeler



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Drabble Collection, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-13 06:35:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3371447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing living should be in a cage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i will not be afraid of your scars

**Author's Note:**

> An ongoing collection of drabbles, each exactly 100 words. Spoilers through the end of Season 2.

No one had pets on the Ark. A waste of resources. Harper’s glad now; nothing living should be in a cage. Has she been here days? Months? Only an hour? She counts time in throbs of pain, in breaths she forces herself to take, not in seconds or minutes. 

When Monty comes, it’s better and worse. Her tears fall on him along with her blood, but he pretends not to notice either one, which is about the nicest thing Harper can imagine. His fingers touching hers through the mesh of the cage are the first time she feels human again.


	2. it's us against consensus

First they made her an animal. Now she’s not even that. She’s like the mountain above and around them, only good for what’s inside.

Monty yells. He tells Dr. Tsing to stop. Harper can barely hear him over the noise, but he keeps calling, shouting, trying to protect her. The rattle of his cage door joins with the whine of the drill to create a strange music. It’s useless. He knows that as well as she does. They’re just barking dogs for all Dr. Tsing hears them, yowling creatures best ignored. Still Monty keeps trying. He remembers Harper is human.


	3. i will never again dream of having the whole world

She’d always felt so tough outside. Maybe it was the guns, but she thinks it was something more, something inside her. In the way she walked and spoke, the way she looked at people. Like her body was made of a challenge. Like no one could mess with her.

Tsing took that away, extracted it from her bones with a drill. Someone looks at her now and she flinches away, terrified. Her legs barely work. Her hands shake so much she can’t hold a cup. 

Monty holds the cup for her. His hand is warm around hers as she drinks.


	4. your spirit is a ready gun

“I couldn’t look at her.” Monty stares at the floor when he says it, like absolution is etched into the concrete.

“I did.” Dr. Tsing’s skin had bubbled like roasting meat. Harper doesn’t want to keep thinking about it; it’s just a scab she can’t stop picking.

“Do you regret it?” He means letting her die, not looking. Harper doesn’t have to think about it at all, but she pretends to, watching him scuff the floor with one foot.

“No,” she says. Monty looks up, peering at her from under hair grown shaggy. He could use a haircut.

“Me neither.”


	5. as soft as water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Note: spoilers for S02xE16, Blood Must Have Blood Pt. 2

He’s the only quiet place in Camp Jaha, and quiet is exactly what Harper needs. After a while even the quiet moments in Mt. Weather were loud, like fear itself had a sound. 

Monty’s quiet is different than hers. Harper’s quiet heals, silencing the screams she still hears, the desperate attempts to bargain with Wallace – _take me, don’t do this, please let us go._ The screams in Monty’s head are his own. 

“Probably my conscience,” he’d joked the first time she found him sitting alone outside the fence, staring at his hands. She bumped him with her shoulder.

“Borrow mine.”


End file.
